Christophe
In No Rest for Biggles, Christophe was an American of African descent who dreamed of starting an African empire and had raised a small army in a camp in the jungles of Liberia. He partnered with Dessalines, also an American of African descent, who was a mechanic in the U.S. Air Force. Dessalines stole a prototype American military aircraft which had been equipped with a top secret experimental device which could interfere with magnetic compasses and also cause aircraft engines to stop. Christophe orghanised a private army and built a jungle base in Northern Liberia while Dessalines piloted the weapon to bring down V.I.P. aircraft so that the passengers could be held for ransom or their secret papers seized and sold to foreign powers. It was in pursuit of these goals that Christophe managed to bring down a Handley Page Hastings V.I.P. flight piloted by Wing Commander Tony Wragg resulting in the capture of U.S. Army General Homer Mander. Later, Dessalines also brought down Biggles' Hastings, believing that it carried a V.I.P. as well. In actual fact, Biggles was acting as a decoy, trying to locate the missing Hastings. Biggles met Christophe shortly after his Hastings had been brought down and he had been taken prisoner by Christophe's troops. Christophe told biggles, among other things, that his great great grandfather was Henri Christophe, a Haitian general who later had himself crowned King of Haiti. The Christophe Biggles met was a man about fifty, tall and powerfully built. Biggles noticed that his expression spoke of immense self-confidence, belying s personality otbe reckoned with. Biggles found it significant that while Christophe had a aide who was festooed all over with gold braid (it is unclear if this was Dessalines), Christophe, by contrast, wore a plain linen boiler suit with no other decoration except five stars on the coller. At first Biggles assumed that Christophe must be acting for some foreign powers but, as he later discovered, Christophe was playing a complex game of doublecross. Having used the support of some Communist powers to obtain the secret weapon, Christophe was now refusing to hand ir over. Much of the plot of the book involved the arrival of Communist agents Boris Zorotov and Erich von Stalhein to try to bargain for or otherwise take control of the secret weapon. Von Stalhein tried to doublecross Christophe by bribing Biggles to fly him and the secrety weapon away, offering Biggles a pair of wire cutters to free himslef form the prison. Unfortunately for von Stalhein, Bertie and Ginger nearby intervened, resulting in Biggles gaining control of the cutters. Biggles freed the prisoners, and got Wing Commander Tony Wragg to fly them to safety. Dessalines took off in the secret prototype in pursuit. He failed to intercept and crashed his prototype on return. From then on, Christophe's fortunes started to unravel. Christophe had the damaged prototype secret aircraft placed under guard. Meanwhile von Stalhein somehow managd to convince Christophe to let Dessalines fly him out to fetch help, probaly in the form of mechanics to repair the prototpye. However von Stalhein betrayed Christophe again, retuning with a group of mercenaries who started to massacre Christophe and his troops. Biggles took advantage of the chaos to set fire to the prototype. This might have saved Christophe's life because von Stalhein, seeing that nothing as to be gained now, departed with his men. Biggles, walking among the massacred troops, found that Christophe had been shot twice but was still alive. Christophe told Biggles he must be "one of dese straight guys you hear about but never meet." He had one last card to play. He still had General Mander's bag of secret papers--von Stalhein had paid fprty thousand dollars for it but, in one last doublecross, Christophe had given him the bags of Mander's secretaries instead. Christophe offered to hand Mander's bag to Biggles if he would take him to a hospital. Biggles had no intention of abandoning Christophe in any case but took him up on his word and took over the bag from Christophe. He allowed Christophe to retain his money which he used to pay off his remaining troops (von Stalhein's forty thousand dollars turned out, of course, to be fake). Christophe was flown out to a British hospital where he was treated for several weeks. His ultimate fate was not known except that he was "taken care of" by the U.S. authorities since he was a U.S. citizen. In the fourth chapter of the book, there is a discussion between General Homer Mander and Biggles about Dessalines' namesake, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, an ex-slave who overthrew French rule in Haiti and became Emperor Jacques I. They also noted the parallel that Christophe was also the name of a Haitian General who later succeeded Dessalines as a ruler. Von Stalhein would later make the same points to Biggles. However there is a little inaccuracy--both mentioned that the historical Christophe killed Dessalines. In reality, the true circumstances of the death of Dessalines are not clear, although Christophe certainly plotted in his death. Christophe did not succeed Dessalines. Haiti was split after Dessalines' death and Christophe headed one part as a king. Category:People Category:Biggles characters Category:Air Police era characters